Fat Rachel and the Hungry Souls
by Fuzzy Necromancer
Summary: During the silence of the gods, Rachel's mom sneaks her a message in her breakfast cereal. With the help of a nerdy not-boyfriend and a bloodthirsty nyad, Rachel must win the favor of her divine parent, confront diet culture, and vanquish a minor monster with some nasty superiors and the power of the living dead.
1. Chapter 1

Authors Note: this is not in continuity with my other fanfic because of Chronos's dying discharges. Also timey-wimey ball.

My breakfast included two fried eggs, a grapefruit, and a divine commandment.

I'd offered one of the eggs to my mother, whoever she was. I traded the grapefruit to Lacy for her eggs (the stick-to-your-cabin's-table rule is relaxed when it's not summer, and while I'm keen on fruit in general, grapefruit carries…unpleasant associations.) I drained my mocha-smoothie goblet and slathered my eggs with ketchup. Then I put my spoon into the cereal bowl.

Sometimes, with alphabet cereal, you get a random word, like "ate" or "god". I didn't bother to come up for a come-back when Drew from Aphrodite gave me a "helpful hint" about carbs. I didn't notice my eggs growing cold or my refilled smoothie getting lukewarm.

This was an entire message in poetic verse. I also remembered we had shredded wheat, not alphabets.

_You will follow the crumb to an old foe's friend_

_Combat the Mist and drop-dead gorgeous_

_Childhood taunts can save you in the end_

_Destroy Rich Honesty's enterprise, and, um, Gaea's butt this poetry is hard_

_Sincerely, Mom_

_PS: My roomy says you should keep quiet about this._

Half the other campers left. My stomach clenched with pain to remind me that I hadn't touched my eggs. I kept puzzling over the soggy cereal.

There was the usual divine vagueness of course. "Drop-dead gorgeous" could be Medusa, Impusae, or Sirens. The Mist was everywhere, keeping mortals and sometimes demigods from seeing the true nature of things. I'd heard from Lacy's ex-girlfriend's current friend-with-benefits that certain heroes, like Thalia, could manipulate the Mist, working their own background details into a mortal setting so people thought they belonged there. I also knew some monsters or gods had a stronger Mist aura that made them difficult to spot, especially to Percy Jackson for some reason. (Go figure: son of the earth-shaker, repeated savior of the planet, the hero who revived our quests, but can't count the number of eyes in somebody's forehead. It just goes to show we're only human. Well, not _only_ human, but you get the idea.)

I polished off my meager breakfast and went up for seconds, then thirds. Sure, the gods had gone silent, our biggest hero was missing, most of the other heroes were only stopping off at camp long enough to grab ambrosia and replace their weapons, and all monsters had suddenly become immortal, but it could be worse. I commanded my goblet to refill with chocolate syrup and drained it in two gulps. At least this wasn't the _other_ camp.

I frowned at my plate. I'd finished off the soggy cereal and then drunk the now-sugary discolored milk. I'd licked the plate clean after that. There weren't any crumbs left.

"Stupid, stupid," I hissed at myself. I drained the goblet and refilled it with hot chocolate. I felt a little calmer after scalding my mouth and finishing that off. Maybe "crumb" meant something else. It didn't do to go too literal with prophecies, but I didn't feel confident figuring it out on my own. I had lots of old foes, mortal and monstrous. Maybe Terry from Athena cabin could help me figure it out.

It's not that I was too dumb to figure it out myself. I just thought it would go faster, and anyway, he owed me a favor.


	2. Chapter 2

On the way to Athena Cabin, Clarice from Ares Cabin called me a tub of lard and Drew from Aphrodite gave me some helpful diet tips. I preferred Clarice's response.

I'll let you in on a few little secrets. First, in addition to being a freckled, pale, frizzy-haired redhead who loves supernatural horror movies with a moderate amount of gore and old-school doctor who, I'm fat. I don't mind the nickname "Fat Rachel" (full name is Rachel Venus, on rare occasions Rae for short, not to be confused with a certain oracular mortal who shares my first name). I do mind people translating it to "Stupid Rachel", "Desperate Rachel" and "Lazy Rachel". Slurs like "fat bitch" only take up a few seconds, but a lecture on how I should really be concerned for my own health, and not because somebody else hates looking at my love handles, wastes half an hour of my time and feels as long as the reign of Chronos.

Camp looks lonely during the fall. The dryads get listless and the satyrs calm down. All the shouts, laughter, and screams die down. You can feel the emptiness swelling up around you. Mind you, it can be pretty. Seeing the nymphs with their multi-colored fall hairdo's is something neat to focus on while Drew blathers about carbs.

I found Terry kneeling in front of two shrines made out of Altoids boxes. Each had a stylized, printed-out picture of a goddess as a background to green text. A lit candle stood in front of each one, and he had some jasmine incense burning. His bowling trophy and a portrait of his dad receiving a nobel prize sat on his otherwise-bare mantelpiece.

"Thank you, mother, lady Athena, for filling my father with the gift of life, for my talents and daily inspiration, and for that one time in Toleda." His "The Angels Have the Phone Booth" t-shirt outlined his lanky frame, while work jeans suggested rather than spelled out a tight rounded butt. Sweat plastered his curly hair to his olive-colored, and fog obscured his glasses. I could just make out his "Thank you, queen of the gods, for not killing me," prayer.

"They aren't answering, you know," I said. Brilliant comment, right? I sure know how to get on somebody's good side.

He kept his eyes closed for a moment and blew out the candles before replying to me.

"Well, I still need to pray to them. It's, well, spiritually important?" He scratched his sideburns in an embarrassed manner.

While I searched for something to say, he plunged into the awkward pause. "I don't really buy that 'God is not gods' speech Kyron gave. I mean, what makes a god a god anyway? We pray to them, look to their stories for inspiration, and we rely on the quests they give us for greater meaning." The words tumbled out like he was trying to catch up to his own tongue.

I nodded slowly. I think I got what he meant. Some ancient Greek philosophers questioned the validity of the gods because they ran around and did naughty things, but the most popular deity in the USA basically let Jobe get horribly abused for a bet with Satan and then shouted at Jobe for daring to question him. Also, he seemed to have trouble obeying His own commandments and making an adequate list of prohibitions. (Note to self: In the unlikely event I ever ascend to godhood, I'm going to put "Thou shalt not rape" and "thou shalt not enslave" and "thou shalt not post creepshots on reddit and act like the people calling you out on it are the _real_ monsters" in my holy text.)

Anyway, plenty of deities outside the Jewish/Christian/Muslim monotheism have a hero's flaws and active following of worshippers. Just go visit India.

"I get what you say," I said, belatedly. I didn't want him to feel like I was weirded out. "I mean, I try to be pious about my mom, whoever she is." Gah! I was losing the thread. "So, remember that favor I did you?"

Terry Theopolis cocked his head. "You mean the time you smuggled in sprite, vanilla vodka, and blue curacao so I could have thematically appropriate cocktails for my Doctor Who Party, or the time you made sure that little photo didn't get around?"

I shrugged. "Take your pick. Point is, I've kind of got a…" I stopped. I closed both of the altoid-tin shrines, looked around, and leaned in very close to him.

"I have a quest, and I want your help."  
He jumped back and nearly stepped on a stray DVD case. "What? You're kidding right. _You_ have a quest?"

I glared, only half-serious. "Don't act so surprised."

"Are you a child of the big three or something? Do we have to save the world from a new titan? Did you talk to the mmph!"  
He kept talking a little while after I'd put my chubby hand on him. "This is on the down-low," I hissed. "No glory, no camp banners, no bragging about it within hearing distance of temple statues. That's why I brought up the favor. I _did _get a prophecy though, so I hoped that you could use your amazing brains to help out with that. But I got the impression that a certain enlightened lord with a thunderous personality may get me and my folks into big trouble if this news gets out."

Wilma and Jessy walked in, and I took my hand off his mouth. In a voice that was only slightly too loud, I said "So, if you could have any Doctor Who lost story recovered, which would it be?"

"The Macra Terror," he said, without hesitation. "I just love the Orwellian dystopia where everyone thinks it's great, and they're harvesting poisonous gas to feed the crab-monsters who are behind it all even though it's useless to them."

"Fair enough," I said, motioning towards the door. "I'd prefer the Tenth Planet myself, because of the first Cybermen appearance and the regeneration scene."

We walked past the nearly-empty cabins. Leaves crunched underneath, and a lonely satyr sucked pensively at a bottle of glue. I waited until we found a spot far enough from the trees and temples, out of the open air but not in actual darkness, just an empty supply shed. I started telling Terry about the prophecy, but he was staring out the window.

"How can she be so shallow?" he whined. He was watching as Lacy locked lips with Ares Cabin's Derek Payne, one of the better-looking sons of the war god (not that this is a hard bar to beat). "Girls are always going for total jerks. What does she see in him? They have _nothing_ in common."

"I have to wonder," I said. The only works of science fiction Lacy watched were The Time Traveler's Wife and Lost. She had her good points, but she'd explained to Terry last month that she didn't want to break his heart. The babbling of a brook almost drowned out my words.

"If she wasn't such a hose-bag she'd hook up with somebody nice who respects her. I mean, for example, I gave her tons of chocolate on Eros day. All these hot girls have a friend right there who would be perfect for them, but they're just too busy chasing after some vapid cool kid who wants nothing to do with them!"  
"Yeah, I hate it when people do that," I said.

"Girls can be downright evil," he said, without looking at me.

"I could tell you about that, too" I said, with a sigh. "Not just girls." He kept glaring out the window. Lacy leaned closer, tweaked Derek's waistband, and bit his shoulder. He growled with delight.

I popped open the window. "Mind if I take a snapshot?"

Lacy waved and Derek tilted a little to show off his good side. I filed away the image with my iPod touch (yeah, no cell phones, but it's not a phone, and the celestial bronze shielding inside keeps the magic from frying circuitry) for later consideration, if you know what I mean. Terry raised an eyebrow and I shrugged, trying not to blush.

"What? The lighting was good," I said. I didn't have to explain my hobbies to somebody who'd just subjected me to the Nice Guy lecture.

Since my weapons-grade sarcasm had failed to penetrate Terry's skull, I told him about the cereal-bowl message, being sure to use the exact wording and leave nothing out. I'd listened to the stories of Percy, Anabeth, Luke, and the like. I'd learned how much you can screw up by holding back something that seems bad, and how many meanings you can fit into one phrase.

His eyes lit up as he considered the problem. He started pacing around, a difficult task in our cramped confines. "Crumb, crumb of wisdom? Crumb of Demeter? No, that would be grain, not crumb. Victor Krumb? No, no. That story has no allegorical applications. Hansel and Gretal? Augh, I'm grasping at straws."

I watched him mutter and stomp. I'd learned not to make suggestions or ask him to explain. He just brainstormed better with somebody to listen while he talked to himself. I figured we made progress when he looked out the window, smacked his forehead, and screamed "Dei Immortalis, I'm an idiot!"

"You got something?" I said.

He grinned at me. "We have to pack fast."

We rushed back to our cabins. I packed half a cube of ambrosia, (I'd had some leftover after recovering from a rather gory capture the flag game), two changes of clothes, my flask of applejack (a type of liquor, not to be confused with the My Little Pony character. Also, mortals? You should have figured out by now that Lauren Faust is really a daughter of Hecate. The last name and "magic" in the title are big hints. You don't think a pure human could make a little girl's show that became hugely popular with grown men, do you?), a few french MREs, and a towel into my water-proof insulated Teen Titans backpack. A stolen spatula was the closest I could come to a divine weapon, and it was low-grade tin, not celestial bronze.

Terry had a small celestial-bronze battleaxe, a toy sonic screwdriver that worked as a regular screwdriver, a pot of Greek fire, some good rope, and two collapsible kayaks. He'd also brought his mother's pocket shrine and a pocket copy of Bullfinch's mythology.

"Nice," I said. "Wish I'd thought of it."

He eyed the flask with a "You know what'll happen if a counselor catches you with that" look. I gave him my best "he or she won't, and half the counselors would just take half as a bribe" smile back.

We started following Crumb Creek, a narrow little brook here. It grew larger, swelled by an underground spring. Willow and cypress lined the banks, and light played on the bottom between ducks and leaves.

I drank in lungfuls of crisp fall air, flavored with BBQ smoke. My mouth watered with the taste of adventure. I grinned stupidly at Terry. He flashed his braces and clenched his fists in excitement.

We almost walked into the crossed arms of Argus.


End file.
